


Pause

by DreamsOfSleep



Category: New Girl
Genre: Angst, Break Up, Canon Compliant, Exes, F/M, Internal Monologue, Oneshot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-24
Updated: 2016-07-24
Packaged: 2018-07-26 09:11:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7568479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DreamsOfSleep/pseuds/DreamsOfSleep
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Extended scene for S3, Ep 20 "Mars Landing" </p><p>Takes place after Nick and Jess go back to sleep in Nick's room after their breakup fight.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pause

**Author's Note:**

> The part of the episode where Nick suggests they go back to being "just friends" still bugs me a lot. We know Nick doesn't believe exes can be friends so why would he say that? There's the simple reason that he still needs her in his life, but that still felt unsatisfying to me. With that option, neither of them would ever be able to move on and Nick knew that. If they were both going to move on, they needed time apart after the breakup. Also by that option, it seemed like Nick was the one giving up on them and he wasn't fighting for Jess the way the audience expected him to. That just didn't ring true to his character. 
> 
> A more optimistic reading of that scene is that Nick was telling Jess to wait for him. He needed more time to get his life together, but he was always coming back for her. He didn't know if she would have moved on by the time he became the man she needed him to be, but this was his way of hanging on to hope and believing in them against all odds. If we take this line of reasoning, Nick was always fighting for Jess and for their relationship the entire time, the whole time they were apart. That felt like true Nick Miller to me.

He had been so happy yesterday. 

Jess was his and he hadn’t been thinking about the future. The future was messy and scary so he had always left it up to Future Nick to think about. It took enough out of him just to survive as Present Nick day to day. Before he met her, thinking about the future paralyzed him. He never could make a decision without knowing all the consequences, knowing exactly what was going to happen. He never knew what he wanted his future life to look like before he met her so he had ended up just living like he was perpetually 25 in the same life he had since he dropped out of law school. 

But then she had come rolling into his life like a big ball of chaos, full of optimism and energy and joy, working her way under his skin, and she had woken him up. He hadn’t been happy, but his life had been safe and comfortable before he met her. But she made him realize he didn’t want that kind of life. She made him realize he wanted Big Things, even if he didn’t know exactly what they were yet. She made him _want_ things and he realized he hadn't wanted anything from his life in a really long time. Wanting to take a chance on something, take a chance on himself, even though he was still terrified of everything. 

He still didn’t know exactly what he wanted out of the future, but it didn’t scare him like it used to because the one thing he knew in the entire world was that he loved her and as long as she was there next to him, he knew that everything would work out. 

\---

That feels like a lifetime ago now. 

They’re lying side by side on his burnt bed with their backs to each other. He’s turned on his side away from her pretending to sleep, but he can’t sleep because he’s thinking about her. She’s gone even though she’s just right there next to him. The ghost of her remains in his life. 

Why did he say he wanted to be “just friends” again? That wasn’t what he had wanted at all, but he had panicked. His rational mind knew one of them should have moved out, but he had felt that impulse to grasp at _something_ to keep her here with him, even though he knew it was a terrible idea. He can’t not love her and it’s torture to have her there yet not there next to him. But he couldn’t help wishing wistfully for their happy ending. Wasn’t it supposed to be happily ever after for them? He had swept her off her feet like the lead in some big romantic movie. He had grabbed her and kissed her to make her see him differently. He had gotten her to sleep with him and they had run away to Mexico together. Then they were supposed to come back and have a real life together forever. But it turned out he had only been good at the big romantic gestures, not the reality of living next to her every day trying to be her boyfriend. He couldn’t even fight for her when they broke up because everything she had said had been true. He couldn’t get her any of those things, couldn’t even grow up or promise her he would be a good husband or a good father or any of it, not how he was now. He didn’t deserve her. And he couldn’t keep holding on to her keeping her from the rest of her real life, that fairytale life she deserved, because he knew he couldn’t make her happy. She always made him happy just being next to him, being able to call her _his_ , but he knew if he convinced her to stay with him, she would be settling for him. He didn't want her to settle when she deserved the whole damn world, even if he couldn't get it for her.

Exes can’t be friends and he knows that, but he thinks he’s waiting for something. Like if he keeps her there next to him, it will remind him to grow up and one day he’ll be good enough and then he’ll be able to win her back. But he doesn’t know if it will be too late by then. She’ll move on without him, even though he will be there the whole time and every cell in his body will be screaming that he loves her, but she won’t hear it. Maybe love was never enough in the first place without all that other stuff.

He’s afraid again: _stuck in neutral in his life, paralyzed by the tightrope he is walking on alone into an uncertain future, terrified that one wrong step will send him tumbling into the dark abyss so he chooses the option of doing nothing, hoping that ‘nothing’ won’t hurt him too badly._ It’s not happiness, but he probably never deserved that anyway. He’s the guy guarding the wallets again instead of running into the ocean, because the only reason he was able to do that was because she had been there holding his hand the entire time. He can’t do it alone and she’s telling him love isn’t enough to keep her there next to him. Maybe it had all been an illusion, the illusion of hope; he had really been alone the entire time. It had felt pretty real to him though. He doesn’t care if it was an illusion; he chooses to believe in it anyway.

He wonders if she remembers that he told her that he’d do anything for her, once. He doesn’t know if she realizes that means letting her go if it makes her happy, even if it kills him. 

He wants to turn to her now and say he thinks about it…he thinks about it all the time, that the moment she had walked through the door, he could picture their whole future together: _her in a white dress coming down the aisle towards him, their first house, their two kids with a dog out in the yard, all of it._ It had been fuzzy and indistinct but the images had been _there_ in his brain. He had no idea how he was supposed to make those things happen though so he didn’t think he could tell her about them and get her hopes up before he inevitably screws it all up again some way. It’s too little too late anyhow…maybe they’d get back together now if he tells her about them, but they’d be living on an expiration date. They would only break up again because he can’t get her those things as the person he is now; he can only imagine them. 

All he really wants to be able to do is curl his body against hers, curl into her the way he has been doing every night for over a year, but he’s not allowed to do that now because they’re broken up, even though he just did that yesterday. He should have tried harder to remember that, what that felt like to have her against him. He should have kissed her and touched her more when he had the chance, told her he loved her more. He had taken it for granted that they would always be together when he should have known he would screw things up eventually for being _him._

\---

He turns on his side to look at her. Her back is to him and it makes him remember the first time they slept together and how he had marveled at her, perfect next to him. How she had allowed him to touch her and claim every inch of her as his. She still looks beautiful now, the familiar, comforting shape of her next to him, but she doesn’t belong to him anymore. Her body is shaking slightly and he thinks she’s crying and even though he knows he isn’t allowed to anymore he reaches over and rubs her back across the burnt bed because all those rules never applied to them anyway. 

She turns on her side to look at him with her tearstained face. They gaze sadly into each other's eyes. He reaches out to wipe her wet cheeks with his hand. _Don't be sad, honey,_ he thinks in his mind. _I'm still here._

And they’re broken up but it’s still _them_ , just him and her, even if they don’t have a neat label on what they are to each other anymore. They aren’t a “couple” anymore but “just friends” isn't enough to encompass what they mean to each other either. 

“Pause?” she asks him in a small voice.

“Pause,” he replies back. 

She comes back to his side of the bed and he spoons her to him and they fall asleep that way for one more night. 

They’ll deal with the fallout in the morning. 

**Author's Note:**

> The "pause function" of Nick and Jess's breakup fight was inspired by the TV series _How I Met Your Mother_ , specifically S1, Ep 22 "Come On."


End file.
